Take Advantage of What You See

I wasn't sure where this was going. Now I know. It's worth sharing. If it wasn't the baby, it might have been the husband.

Dilemmas - WWYD?

Today at breakfast Sam posed the age old question: "would you rather have your arm sawed off by a bread knife or a steak knife?" Although these are preposterous questions and dilemmas that we never envision having to grapple with, I always think about them pretty seriously. Over my coffee I pondered if the butter knife would be worse because it would involve a lot of sawing and would be painfully and gruellingly long - but then the steak knife with its ridges and sharpness would certainly bring more immediate blood and injury. But it would be quicker.

My life is not so leisurely that I can spend a lot of time on these quandaries, but I think it shows Sam's mind is ticking and he makes mine tick too. It's morbid, yes, and he's not a weapon-obsessed kid. On another day he might ask what would happen if humans didn't have tongues or if your wheel fell off while you were going 80 mph on I-25. Most of the time I don't have the answers, but it's fun discussion. Mind expanding in a weird way.

As we get older it seems we lose this ability to think way outside of the possibility of our situation because we don't have time or it's dumb or why bother if it will never happen. But the mind of a kid is always contemplating and wondering and it's too bad we lose some of this when we age.

And then there are always the crafty solutions our kids come up with that we would never dream of. Take for instance dinner last night. Emma had a mouth full of chicken and rice. The phone rang and when I answered it (totally a no-no during dinner, but I the number was for a hospital and I thought maybe someone was in trouble). Anyway, it was her friend wanting to discuss "twin day" and what they would be wearing. Knowing it would be a short convo, I gave the phone to Emma. She had a dilemma because her mouth was full yet she wanted to talk. What would most of us do? Put our index finger up to give the universal sign of "hold on a minute" and finish chewing our food. Not Emma. She grabbed the phone and with complete reflex and lack of inhibition, spit her food out on her plate and began talking. Not a solution I would have come up with or chosen.

There's always something to learn. Always a new way to look at things.

Tween Talk

Sam, yesterday: Mom, guess what?

Me: What?

Sam: There are some girls in my class who have bigger boobs than you do.

I have nothing to say to this. He is right. Either this is a total bust on me for being small, or a comment on those 11 year olds who are too big for their age. Either way, the bottom line is that Sam is noticing breasts (including mine) and I'm not sure how that makes me feel.

Flakes and Other Issues

Emma has scalp issues. As an infant she had the worst cradle cap and since dandruff is kind of a big person problem, I prefer to say she has 7 year old cradle cap. If you happen to look down on her head from above, kind of near where her hair parts, you can see some major flakes. This morning she had too many flakes to count and her hair looked kind of greasy. Fortunately most second graders are about her height so not too many of them will notice the multitude of flakes on the top.

Emma's flakes made me think of that kid in fourth grade who always had greasy hair, dandruff and smelled very earthy and musky. Like wet socks. This kid often had clothes that weren't right for the weather or were too big. He or she often "forgot" his lunch and played alone at recess. His or her homework, if it was turned in, was usually wrinkled and smudged. From what we know now, we can say that if a kid shows up repeatedly with poor hygiene and ill fitting clothes, they aren't getting quite the right attention and care at home. God only know what type of dysfunction might be going on. The last thing they need to be is excluded at school, but that's what usually happens because kids are kids and this is what they do to one another. They can be mean and cruel.

I like to think I was a pretty nice girl growing up, but even I dissed "Barbara Booger," the girl who I now know must have had major psoriasis or some other skin condition that caused her to always be flaking dry bits of her body everywhere. I'm not sure why we called her "Barbara Booger," probably because since it wasn't enough to have a debilitating skin condition, we decided that she probably ate her boogers too. Or maybe we thought the flakes of skin were boogers. Then there was crazy Marvin who was partial to having major rages in the middle of class. I think the first time I heard the "F" word was when Marvin screamed it at a teacher while he was being restrained by several adults.

We all have memories of these kids - the ones who were excluded, made fun of - the troubled kids. As a kid we usually don't have the insight to know that it's not really an issue of dirty clothes or inappropriate tantrums, but a larger and more pervasive systemic problem most likely connected to something going on in the home. Even my best friend, Leigh, always wore mildewed and wrinkled clothes, her favorite t-shirt in fifth grade being one that read "Seven days of beer makes one weak." Her house was so filthy that we never played there. Her mom always had a bad back was marooned on a hospital bed in the dining room and her brother was disabled. I never saw her dad. At the time it didn't strike me as weird. But as an adult I would love to know what was really going on in that home.

Don't get me wrong - not all kids are perfectly coiffed or behaved. But a few stand out and I see them now in my kids' classes. I try to explain to my kids the bigger picture without getting too graphic. I also try to encourage kindness and thoughtfulness towards those who might be struggling.

Just a few thoughts on my mind about those who might not have it so good at home.